


More or Less

by aelysian



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelysian/pseuds/aelysian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeryn Sun is always in control.  Except when she isn't.</p><p>Originally posted to Livejournal in August 2011</p>
            </blockquote>





	More or Less

She was born and bred a soldier.  She's said it before but she doesn't think Crichton understands; she looks out on Australia and thinks it's possible he never will.  Life as a Peacekeeper meant discipline, obedience and above all, control.  Aeryn Sun is always in control.  Except when she isn't.  
  
 _(Twelve cycles.  She's below the average in height and gets grounded, left behind by the rest of her unit.  Tolyn Dreskar shoves her in the corridor on the way to the hangar bay and she throws her first pantak jab.  Or tries to.  She bloodies his nose at least and sits in solitary for a solar day with red welts striping her hands for it.  The seclusion is the real punishment and everyone from infants in crèches to the high council knows it.  
  
Twenty-three cycles.  She's mostly learned what everyone else knows: frustration and anger are yours to manage.  They belong to you and they are yours to bear.  The punching tower is familiar with her fists and she pounds the smooth red leather until the chaos is gone and she's in control again.  
  
Velorek changes everything.)_  
  
The gray sky has gone black, giving way at the horizon to the halo of city lights.  She can't see the stars and wonders again at the billions of humans on this isolated rock, wonders if they ever look up and know what they're missing.  
  
John wakes and if it wasn't for his heightened body heat, in the dark, he could be anyone.  She knows who he is when he says her name in that rough, foreign tongue and in the hours before sunrise she lets him have his way.  
  
He tells her about childhood, about summers and autumns, about the tang of lemonade and the crunch of decaying foliage.  He tells her these things and she lets it wash over her, his words spilling out in the jumble of his language that she can hear just under the Sebacean.  She picks them out, the shorter sounds, hard and sharp on her tongue and teeth but his smile is so wide she tries anyway.  
  
She tells him about youth, because the look in his eyes is a request and she knows what for; the language of John Crichton is one she's learning with ease.  She revisits first flights and first missions, successes and failures and when she skips over punishments, he touches her and she knows he thinks he understands.  
  
He doesn't, of course.  
  
 _(She sealed her fate as well as his in the moment of her betrayal.  
  
Obedience is everything, and when Crais summons her to his quarters she doesn't think of disobeying.  She recognizes the steely lust in his eyes and if she missed it the first time, she isn't blind to the strange light burning behind them when he orders her closer.  
  
She tells herself it isn't any different from the punishments of her childhood, but Velorek's words echo unbidden in her mind.  Crais is a maniac.)_  
  
Balance is the way of Peacekeeper life, even if Crichton can't understand that.  For success there is commendation and for failure there is punishment.  She'd lived her life along that narrow measure without question, blind to what John called “grey area” and Velorek had called “more”.  
  
 _You can be more._ The words are like a curse on her life.  
  
Velorek had given her a taste of more, bittersweet on her lips and intoxicating with the danger.  And then he'd died, her actions spinning the grey axis of more until dizzy, punishment and praise were indistinguishable from one another.    
  
_(You must atone, Officer Sun.  She feels his words disturb the air, his hands on her shoulders, pushing her to her knees.  The deck is cold through her leather; rough fingers hot against her skin as they curve around her neck, digging into pale skin and slender muscle.  Then it burns, sharp and biting flesh, like fire racing along the nerves before being extinguished by the icy floor; she's fallen, it seems.  
  
Attention, Officer Sun.  She stands and refuses to tremble.  Crais strokes the bared skin of her throat, his voice soft.  You must follow orders, Officer Sun.  
  
The affirmation comes without hesitation because Aeryn Sun is a Peacekeeper.  This is what she knows.)  
_  
He's gentle, his hands and mouth and eyes slow and patient and torturous over her body.  Maybe it's something about the thin light, the angle of her hips or the way she reacts when the crescent of his fingernail slides just _there_.  His breath catches and she closes her eyes before she can see what's written on his face.  
  
“Aeryn–”  
  
“No.”  
  
 _(They sprawl silver-white and thin, over her body like fractures in the pale surface.  Battle scars, she thinks, and Crais's voice echoes in her mind.  Damages in the line of duty.  Punishment.  
  
She thinks of solitary as a child, thinks of the terror of isolation and silence, and tells herself that this is better, pain is better, even when she can't tell the difference anymore.  
  
His hands and teeth and orders are on her body and she thinks she must be becoming a better soldier.  A better Peacekeeper.  Better.  
  
His commands fall soft on desperate ears and she'll do anything to atone; punishment is just rewards for her crimes.  Crais draws more from her like blood, makes her less, tells her she's nothing and isn't she beautiful?  
  
Less, she can be less, she thinks.  She can be nothing at all.)  
_  
“Tomorrow.  When they come.”  She won't be taken again.  Caged in metal and glass and ordered by men with cold in their eyes and hands that grip her with something stronger than bone and muscle.  She thinks she understands why D'Argo hates the chains so much and –  
  
It's his turn to cut her off.  
  
 _(Flying is freedom.  When the controls of her Prowler are under her hands, when space is deep and vast and her domain at the nose of her sleek, beautiful ship, there isn't less or more; there isn't anything at all.  She is nothing, but in space there's a ship breaking formation, breaking away and apart, and she's carrying Aeryn Sun in her heart._  
  
Hers is a death sentence and it's easier to believe she died that day than remember a naked ghost on the cold deck begging for what she called a life.)  
  
She wakes with the first hint of daylight, to the rasp of Crichton's heavy breathing and his too-warm body tucked around hers.  She's withdrawing even as he's tugging her closer in his sleep and if she'd let herself acknowledge it, it'd be painful, how well they fit.    
  
Aeryn pulls away and lets his heat seep from her body.  She dresses in the thin light and watches, expressionless, as Crichton shifts in his sleep, unconsciously reaching into the vacant space beside him.  She knows what he's looking for and she supposes that this is one of those lessons that needs to be learned, not taught.  
  
Love is a weapon and she's told Crichton so before.  (He gave her that ever quizzical expression and she knew he didn't understand.)  Love is more and more is death and the love of Aeryn Sun is a poison she's spilling.  It's a pulse pistol to his head and she won't pull the trigger.  
  
By the time he wakes, Aeryn Sun is in control.  She's always in control.  
  
Except when she isn't.  
  



End file.
